Egypt's Ancient Key
by mr.purple-cat
Summary: A middle-school student inherets the Milennium ankh. Weirdness, mild language, and hopefully kick-butt action.
1. Default Chapter

I'm really sorry about my old first chapter. Way too short. This one should be much better.  
  
Disclaimer: I DON'T OWN ANYTHING IN THIS FIC WITH THE EXCEPTION OF THE WAY THESHADOW REALM WORKS. TOUCH IT AND ALL FLAMES WILL BE REDIRECTED FROM ANZU TO YOU. JUST A FRIENDLY WARNING.  
  
Also, I have never found out how the series ends, so please find other things to flame me for.  
  
Egypt's ancient key  
  
Chapter One  
  
Five thousand years is a long time. A very, very long time. Think of it like this: days can seem like the longest time ever. Memory can barely stretch over eighty years. A life rarely makes one hundred years, at which point so much time has passed that youth is totally forgotten. Five thousand years was so long ago, even history has forgotten some of it because of the time. Five thousand years.   
  
This forgotten and seemingly non-existent time was the set of Egypt's most interesting, and subsequently most forgotten era. One of the most forgotten things is the existence of the millennium items. Seven in all, they were created to house some of the raw power that existed then. They almost worked too well. People forgot the powerful forces that pulsed from the shadow realm. They took the safety of the items for granted. Wars broke out through their awesome power, which were ironically played out through games. Games of great danger and dimension twisting power known as "shadow games". Afterwards, the items were dormant. For five thousand years. Five thousand years of building power, and waiting for suitable bearers who could unleash said powers. All, with the exception of the Puzzle, Rod, and Eye, remained dormant until the fateful and highly unlikely day the Ankh found an outlet of it's very own…  
  
It was raining. The whole place was barely recognizable because of it. It reminded Stephanie of London. She had been living in London with her parents when her uncle died. So she had boarded a jet liner and flown to New York with her parents. It had rained since they got there. She couldn't help thinking that the whole thing was a lot like a movie, or a cheesy paperback romance novel. Only movies and books usually fail to mention that people then to wear several layers of clothing to a funeral. Several highly absorbent layers of clothing. So her dress (or at least the outermost layer of it) was sagging in the mud around her late uncle's grave. The minister was droning on about life after death. Steph thought it was rubbish. They only had a minister because nobody could remember how an ancient Egyptian funeral was supposed to go, her mother inclusive. And that is saying something. Isis ishtar could always seem to find out anything, no matter how obscure it was. It also seemed awkward to hold the funeral of a man who had lived in an arid climate his whole life in the pouring rain.   
  
They finally finished the service. Oddly enough, nobody cried. Nobody had been close enough to Shadi to cry for him. The only person present who looked more than slightly pained was a man named Yugi. He spent the whole time looking at something a little above and beyond Isis' shoulder. Steph, who knew nobody, simply stood there and did her best to keep the other layers of her dress out of the mud. As they were going to leave, Isis pulled her aside.  
  
"I want you to meet some people," she said. "And you also have to be present when Shadi's will is read. I don't know how he knows you, but you apparently still get some inheritance. Don't worry about a thing. It's probably nothing dangerous." She patted Steph on the head and led her over to where Yugi was standing. Isis and Yugi spoke for around twenty minutes. Steph stood there and added to a mental journal of the day's proceedings so far. It took a depressingly short amount of time. Then she spoke briefly to Yugi about typical things. How's eighth grade, are you feeling all right, etc., etc. This, thankfully, halted abruptly when the will was read. (PAY ATTENTION!!!!!!) Steph, her mother, Yugi, and three other people filed into a dreary room with an even more dreary old man sitting behind the desk at one end. The inheritance was meager. Isis got the small estate that was left. Yugi got an ancient looking gold balance and an equally ancient golden key. These were the only things of any value given at all. Of course, other than a few select passages that were read to Steph:  
  
'For my niece, I will leave a warning. Your inheritance is not to be misused. It is not to be taken for granted. It is not at all wonderful, only powerful. Please exercise the caution that I was too foolish to remember'  
  
And absolutely nobody in the room knew what he was talking about.  
  
Hahahaha! I'm so going to leave you in semi-suspenseful suspense! Please review. No gas flames. Alternitave fuels all the way, dude! 


	2. a bit of an answer

I'll have you all know that I'm very upset about not getting reviews. I'm very, very insulted, and I won't write a third chapter without at least one review. For all of you in the back who just said "thank god," I know where you live.

Also a correction from chapter one : The ring and necklace were activated too! Not positive about the scales though...

Anyway!

Chapter Two

Steph and Isis stayed at Yugi's house for the night. They played monopoly. Eight times. All of which Yugi won within half an hour. Steph made them watch "The Mummy" which she found adequately thrilling, but just seemed to make her mother and Yugi reminiscent of something. Everyone seemed to have forgotten that they had been at a funeral just that morning, which Steph didn't give a thought to until around four in the morning.

Steph had slept peacefully in the attic until she had a distressing dream about trout which were swimming up a waterfall. She woke up at four-thirteen to find the attic bathroom. She walked into the hall and found the bathroom after a few tries, which was just as well because by this time she was hopping up and down.

There's something interesting about going to the toilet in the wee hours of the morn' that is thought provoking. Maybe it's because one tends to be half-asleep. Whatever it was, it was causing steph to think of Shadi. The only time she had met him, he had seemed like a statue. He hadn't talked much, and didn't move if he didn't have to, yet seemed to always turn up slightly before you went looking for him. He was Egyptian, bus spent his final years living in suburban New York, apparently without a job. And there was the strange matter of Steph's inheritance. She suddenly jerked out of her thoughts, finished her... duty... and ran to the room at the end of the hall. There was no real reason to run . It was just a random thought that pushed her. But it was whispering to her : the answer is just behind the door, just beyond a few insignificant inches of wood, it's just behind the door...

She turned the handle and opened the door. She was expecting a dark room, with nothing in it but a box, which probably had strange designs on it. Instead, the room was brightly lit. It did have a plain and rather grubby looking box in one corner. In the other corner Yugi was closing a book in a la-z-boy chair.

"I wondered when you showed up," he said carefully, as if he had practiced it. Steph stored this away for future reference.

"You knew I was coming here?"

"Of course. Shadi wouldn't have picked you if you didn't have some natural talent. He had an eye for that kind of thing." He paused and chuckled to himself, "well, at least until Pegasus took it."

Steph squinted at him. He was short, about her height, and had very strange hair. His receding hair line wasn't helping matters. He had no real impressive features. He was only impressive if you knew about his Duel Monsters card game skills. She had played him once. And lost in three turns. That was with him going easy. He really didn't seem like the sort of person to dispense the secrets of a strange old Egyptian statue. And yet, here he was opening the lid of the box.

"This is Shadi's...gift to you," said Yugi, laying a slight stress on the name, as if to say :It's his fault if anything bad happens. "This is the Millennium Ankh, or Key, an extremely powerful item with lots and lots of secrets. When I tell you about it, I'm going to have to ask you to keep calm. Understand?"

Steph nodded, looking at the thing in Yugi's hand. It was a glimmering key, made out of gold and in the shape of an Egyptian ankh. It's outward beauty would attract a lot of people, but Steph was staring into it. It seemed as if it had layers, that were just waiting to be seen.

"I'd better start from the beginning," said Yugi. He got up and gestured to the chair. "You'd better sit down, this is a long one. Settled? Good. This started in ancient Egypt, around 5000 years ago, give or take a century. Egypt was a strange place. It's location in a desert that used to be an ocean, and the pyramids probably had something to do with it. It being the raw power drifting aimlessly around the general area in those days. The stuff kept manifesting itself as gods and things. Yes, that's why a large number of religions come from around there. But in Egypt, a particularly clever pharaoh came up with a way of housing the power. He had tried mummies, but they kept incarnating and killing people. He had tried games but those were even worse. Finally he came up with the Millennium Items. There were seven in all, and they worked very well. Too well. People got used to having them, and used them to play shadow games, games of power. Wars, really. But, as could be expected, things got out of hand, and the games almost destroyed the players. Thankfully, the pharaoh managed to settle the thing before everyone was killed. This, however meant that the items were left shoring up power in Shadi's basement for a _very_ long time. The scales and Ankh are the only two that haven't been activated yet, and I think that the Ankh has never actually been used properly. Right now, It's probably the most powerful of all. Any questions?"

Steph rolled her eyes. "Just a request. Prove it."

Yugi grinned. "Gladly. Hold on a second" He reached into the box and produced a small golden pyramid.

"This is the Millennium Puzzle. Be grateful for it. It has insured that you were born. It housed the spirit of the ever popular pharaoh for 5000 years. It picked me to wield it for a reason that I will never know. It might have had something to do with my lineage, but that was probably to throw us off. Something this strong learns to look after itself." seeing the look on Steph's face, he added "Yes. This lump of gold is that strong. And now a practical demonstration, I think."

He held the puzzle out at arms length and closed his eyes. Occasionally his mouth moved a little. Someone really good at lip reading might have been able to pick out phrases like: "The last lunar eclipse was last October" and "Remember to compensate for the sun". Then his shadow went runny. It writhed a little and snaked around to join Steph's. Insofar as a shadow can hold on for dear life, hers did. Then everything went black. Steph blinked once to make sure her eyes were open. She narrowed her eyes.

"we're inside a shadow, right?"

"Very perceptive," said Yugi. He was the only thing Steph could see. He was holding a lantern that, rather than giving off light, gave a less murky darkness, which was good enough. She ran to it like a moth.

"What is this?" she asked.

"This," said Yugi expansively, "is the Shadow Realm. The place that exists everywhere, all the time. You can do anything you want here, provided that you can overcome the natives. Oh look, a perfect example..."

They were being approached by an unfortunate cross between a clam and a ballet dancer

"You see, the shadow realm is composed of dreams. Which just goes to show, mind what you eat right before bed. It could kill you someday." He turned to Steph. "This is where all the millennium power comes from. You will use it well, I hope."

Steph was dumbfounded.

"What? Me? The Ankh? But-" Yugi held the Ankh out to her. Here she could actually see some of the extra layers. Funny how a lot of them had her hand around it. She decided to join them. The took the Ankh.

A tremor went through the shadow realm. Ancient and insignificant dreamed thought up by phytoplankton turned and looked. The darkness shifted towards Yugi and Steph. Steph slowly held the Ankh up to the not-light.

Yugi shifted uneasily. "I can show you wha-"

"No need for that, now," said Steph. "I know more than you think." She flashed him a smile that hinted at fangs. Her eyes seemed more angular and cold for a second, but then it passed. She looked at the thing in her hands and sat down.

"But it's such a-a -"

"Responsibility?" supplied Yugi. He put an arm around her shoulders. They talked for a while. Eventually, Steph went back to bed. She put the Ankh under her pillow, and dreamt of pyramids.


End file.
